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Lay Flat is a newish nonprofit (founded by photographer Shane Lavalette) seeking to help artists create awesome photo books.  Founded in January of 2009, they are still getting their feet wet.

They work with both up-and-coming and more established artists to "create books that express a vision and exist as artful objects in themselves."  Lay Flat also publishes a magazine.

Their books are Lay Flat 01: Remain in Light (out now) and Lay Flat 02: META (coming soon).

Young places like this are a great way to gain a lot of experience quickly. If you are in the Boston area and in school, check out their internship.

No longer will you have to travel to Park City, Utah just to be a part of Sundance. A new event has been created by the Sundance Institute called Sundance Film Festival U.S.A. that will enable Sundance filmmakers to come to you - well, at least eight of them, all of whom will travel to eight separate cities on January 28 during the festival's awards weekend.

Upload your original music/video by December 15, 2009, and win your share of over $6000 worth of DJ gear and prizes.

IK Multimedia is proud to announce the “Mobile Groove Video Contest” on YouTube, powered by GrooveMaker, FourTrack, MixMeister Scratch, DopplerPad and InstantDrummer apps for iPhone/iTouch! Post your iPhone/iPod Music Video* on YouTube by December 15th, 2009 and you may win cool DJ gear and your share of over $6000 worth in prizes!

Brimming with interesting tidbits about everything from manipulation software to lenses, Photography 24/7 is a site that inspires people to take their pictures further. Most of the content seems geared towards young photographers looking to break into the industry and photo-fledglings.

Recent features include a spotlight on photographer Tony Sweet, affordable photo editing software, and tricks to handle bad weather on assignment.

What separates this site from many others is that you can feel how excited the writer is about photography. The tone is downright giddy when a new product goes for a test drive and the Tony Sweet interview sounded nearly awestruck.  I say passion and quality content make this site certifiably awesome.

Fotolia's new plug-in, created for Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, lets users directly log in to their image gallery to purchase pictures. The application is free and gives you access to Fotolia's high resolution images.

One you buy an image, you can use it without any restrictions on locations or number of times used or period of time. The images are royalty-free.

This blog was contributed by Frances Cirenza, ZIO Photography Channel Assistant.

We here at Zoom In Online realize that you probably spend so much time perusing our site that you may occasionally look up from your web browsing and notice that multiple days have passed. We appreciate that. While we can't make up for your lost days of work or missing your spouse's/friend's/relative's/child's birthday, we can update you on what you're missing in the outside world - what DVDs are being released, for instance. Check Zoom In Online every Tuesday to keep tabs on all the DVD and Blu-ray releases for the week.

It's sometimes hard to get away from all the negativity swirling around the music industry these days.

In case you haven't heard, things are not all sunshine and rainbows in Hollywood.  This year's economic recession has hit the film industry just as hard, if not harder, than every other industry despite another record-breaking summer box office.  Recent high-profile shakeups at Disney and Universal have made headlines and shocked industry insiders, but the even bigger story is the ominous uncertainty of what will become of the independent film model.  In the past year, we've seen the shutting down of Warner Independent Pictures and Picturehouse, both owned by Warner Bros., the absorption of Paramount Vantage into its parent company, Paramount Pictures, as well as a major slimming down of staff at Miramax Films and persistent rumors of a financial collapse of The Weinstein Company.  It seems to be a bleak time for independent film.  Or is it?  Maybe it's a live and well - in one for or another.

This blog post was submitted by Max Willens, ZIO's Music Channel Assistant.

Everybody knows that music magazines are dying. Just head to any book or record store (assuming, of course, that you can still find one) and check out the racks. The advertising is drying up, the readers have moved on, and really, it's only a matter of time.

This blog was contributed by Frances Cirenza, Zio Editorial Assistant.